In the Retirement Savings Contributions Credit interview in TurboTax, you are asked to specify what kinds of distributions did you have since 2022. I can see a number of reasons why TurboTax has to ask you this, rather than figuring it automatically as you suggest:
TurboTax does not maintain a database of previous distributions, so TurboTax was required to ask about distributions for 2022, 2023, and 2024.
There are also a large number of distributions that are not permitted to be listed on the 8880, line 4, such as
- distributions that were actually rollovers,
- distributions that were actually a loan from a qualified employer plan,
- distributions that were actually the withdrawal of excess contribution, and so on.
It would be difficult if not impossible for TurboTax to know these requirements based on the information that it already has; hence, TurboTax asks for specific entries for the 8880 so as to avoid mistakenly including inappropriate distributions on the 8880.
Please see the instructions for line 4 on page 2 for form 8880.
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